Spokane police hold 23 in drug bust
Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, July 25, 2001
By John K. Wiley
Associated Press
SPOKANE — The resident manager of an apartment complex that police called "a rat’s nest of illegal activity" and another man were charged Wednesday with conspiring to distribute crack cocaine, sometimes from vacant units.
The two men charged Wednesday were among 23 people detained Tuesday night in what police say is the biggest drug bust in the city’s history. It was an investigation involving city police, county sheriff’s deputies and federal agents.
Arrest warrants were issued charging four other men with federal drug conspiracy counts. FBI resident agent Egon Dezihan declined to say whether any of the four, identified as leaders of the crack cocaine conspiracy, had been arrested by noon Wednesday.
"This was a big operation. In essence, we took over an entire apartment complex," Spokane assistant police chief Jim Nicks said. "It was just a rat’s nest of illegal activity."
More than 120 Spokane police officers and supervisors were involved, including 70 officers from department SWAT and tactical teams who served warrants at 19 of 30 units at the Casa Granada Apartments, Nicks said.
Police seized an undisclosed quantity of drugs and at least one weapon.
Among those arrested Tuesday was Robert N. Butler, the Casa Granada resident manager.
Butler, 44, made an initial appearance Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno on a federal charge of conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base, the substance used to make crack cocaine.
An FBI affidavit in support of an arrest warrant alleges that Butler gave drug dealers access to empty apartments to make sales.
Also appearing before the federal magistrate was Reginald E. Anderson Jr., 23. He, too, was charged with conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of cocaine base.
Imbrogno ordered the two men held pending a Friday bail hearing. If convicted, they would face mandatory sentences of 10 years to life without parole, and up to $4 million in fines.
The raid concluded four months of surveillance and dozens of undercover narcotics purchases at the apartment complex in Browne’s Addition, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, police said.
Lt. Mike Prim, who headed the seven-minute raid for the Spokane Police Department, said there were six days of planning and six hours of rehearsal before officers spilled out of rental vans parked near the apartments at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Dezihan and Prim said it is too early to say whether federal forfeiture laws will be used against the owner of the apartment buildings, who does not live there.
The FBI and Spokane police had started parallel investigations but decided early on to combine their efforts, Nicks and Dezihan said. The Spokane County Sheriff’s Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms where brought in to help with the raid.
Neighbors had complained for months about drug sales and prostitution activity near the apartment buildings. Browne’s Addition, just east of downtown, is a mixed-income neighborhood of large family homes, former mansions built by the city’s founders and apartment complexes.
Officer Max Hewitt, who patrols the neighborhood, said the department received about 100 complaints from residents who had been accosted by prostitutes or threatened by gang members near the apartments in the past three months.
"The activities there were extremely blatant," he said.
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